Belgian and French authorities have tightened security at Jewish sites after what officials said appeared to be an anti-Semitic act of terror in Brussels on Saturday.
Police are hunting for an assailant who shot dead three people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels on the eve of regional and national elections in Belgium and European Parliament elections in which some far right parties are expected to perform well.
“From the images we have seen, we can deduce that the author probably acted alone and was well prepared,” Ine Van Wymersch, a spokeswoman for the Brussels prosecutor’s office told reporters on Sunday.
“It’s still too early to confirm whether it’s a terrorist or an anti-Semitic attack, all lines of investigation are still open,” she said.
Belgium’s minister of home affairs, Joëlle Milquet, said there were clear indications that the attack was of an anti-Semitic nature. “It’s a shooting . . . at the Jewish Museum,” she told RTBF television. “All of this can lead to suspicions of an act of anti-Semitism.”
Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur said that in all likelihood the shooting was a “terrorist act”, adding that the attack against the Jewish museum could not be treated as coincidence.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, condemned the “act of murder”, which he said was “the result of constant incitement against Jews and their state”.
“Slander and lies against the state of Israel continue to be heard on European soil even as the crimes against humanity and acts of murder being perpetrated in our region are systematically ignored,” Mr Netanyahu said in a statement to foreign media early on Sunday.
Joel Rubinfeld, president of the Belgian League against Antisemitism, told the Financial Times that he had been expecting such an attack for some time.
“This kind of attack was in the air,” Mr Rubinfeld said. “Over the past few years we’ve allowed anti-Semitic speech to run loose; it’s this violent language that has armed the terrorists’ guns.”
Two weeks ago the Belgian minister of home affairs banned a Europe-wide meeting of far right anti-Semitic groups that was meant to be held in Brussels.
Leaders of the Jewish community said the expected success in French elections of Marine Le Pen’s far right National Front party, which has been historically openly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel, was extremely concerning.
Mr Rubinfeld said that “the popularity of the FN made anti-Semitism rhetoric more acceptable; it legitimises it . . . This is concerning, very concerning.”
A witness told the AFP news agency that he had seen two bodies in the lobby of the museum. One was “a young woman with her head covered in blood”, he said. “She was holding a leaflet and looked like a tourist.”
A spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that two of the people killed were Israeli tourists from Tel Aviv, a couple in their 20s. Their names had not yet been made public, he said.
José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, called the shooting “an attack on European values, which we cannot tolerate”.
Security was tightened across Brussels on Sunday, particularly around the Israeli embassy.
Additional reporting by John Reed in Jerusalem
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